If Men of mature age, through want of practice, be thus easily beguiled into admiration of absurdities, extravagances, and misplaced ornaments, thinking it proper that their understandings should enjoy a holiday, while they are unbending their minds with verse, it may be expected that such Readers will resemble their former selves also in strength of prejudice, and an inapt.i.tude to be moved by the unostentatious beauties of a pure style. In the higher poetry, an enlightened Critic chiefly looks for a reflection of the wisdom of the heart and the grandeur of the imagination. Wherever these appear, simplicity accompanies them, Magnificence herself, when legitimate, depending upon a simplicity of her own, to regulate her ornaments. But it is a well-known property of human nature, that our estimates are ever governed by comparisons, of which we are conscious with various degrees of distinctness. Is it not, then, inevitable (confining these observations to the effects of style merely) that an eye, accustomed to the glaring hues of diction by which such Readers are caught and excited, will for the most part be rather repelled than attracted by an original Work, the colouring of which is disposed according to a pure and refined scheme of harmony? It is in the fine arts as in the affairs of life, no man can _serve_ (i.e. obey with zeal and fidelity) two Masters.
As Poetry is most just to its own divine origin when it administers the comforts and breathes the spirit of religion, they who have learned to perceive this truth, and who betake themselves to reading verse for sacred purposes, must be preserved from numerous illusions to which the two Cla.s.ses of Readers, whom we have been considering, are liable. But, as the mind grows serious from the weight of life, the range of its pa.s.sions is contracted accordingly; and its sympathies become so exclusive, that many species of high excellence wholly escape, or but languidly excite, its notice. Besides, men who read from religious or moral inclinations, even when the subject is of that kind which they approve, are beset with misconceptions and mistakes peculiar to themselves. Attaching so much importance to the truths which interest them, they are p.r.o.ne to overrate the Authors by whom those truths are expressed and enforced. They come prepared to impart so much pa.s.sion to the Poet"s language, that they remain unconscious how little, in fact, they receive from it. And, on the other hand, religious faith is to him who holds it so momentous a thing, and error appears to be attended with such tremendous consequences, that, if opinions touching upon religion occur which the Reader condemns, he not only cannot sympathize with them, however animated the expression, but there is, for the most part, an end put to all satisfaction and enjoyment. Love, if it before existed, is converted into dislike; and the heart of the Reader is set against the Author and his book.--To these excesses, they, who from their professions ought to be the most guarded against them, are perhaps the most liable; I mean those sects whose religion, being from the calculating understanding, is cold and formal. For when Christianity, the religion of humility, is founded upon the proudest faculty of our nature, what can be expected but contradictions? Accordingly, believers of this cast are at one time contemptuous; at another, being troubled, as they are and must he, with inward misgivings, they are jealous and suspicious;--and at all seasons, they are under temptation to supply by the heat with which they defend their tenets, the animation which is wanting to the const.i.tution of the religion itself.
Faith was given to man that his affections, detached from the treasures of time, might be inclined to settle upon those of eternity;--the elevation of his nature, which this habit produces on earth, being to him a presumptive evidence of a future state of existence; and giving him a t.i.tle to partake of its holiness. The religious man values what he sees chiefly as an "imperfect shadowing forth" of what he is incapable of seeing. The concerns of religion refer to indefinite objects, and are too weighty for the mind to support them without relieving itself by resting a great part of the burthen upon words and symbols. The commerce between Man and his Maker cannot be carried on but by a process where much is represented in little, and the Infinite Being accommodates himself to a finite capacity. In all this may be perceived the affinity between religion and poetry; between religion--making up the deficiencies of reason by faith; and poetry--pa.s.sionate for the instruction of reason; between religion--whose element is infinitude, and whose ultimate trust is the supreme of things, submitting herself to circ.u.mscription, and reconciled to subst.i.tutions; and poetry--ethereal and transcendent, yet incapable to sustain her existence without sensuous incarnation.
In this community of nature may be perceived also the lurking incitements of kindred error;--so that we shall find that no poetry has been more subject to distortion, than that species, the argument and scope of which is religious; and no lovers of the art have gone farther astray than the pious and the devout.
Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispa.s.sionate government?
Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of mind which no selfishness can disturb? For a natural sensibility that has been tutored into correctness without losing anything of its quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands which an Author of original imagination shall make upon them, a.s.sociated with a judgement that cannot he duped into admiration by aught that is unworthy of it?--among those and those only, who, never having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the best power of their understandings. At the same time it must be observed--that, as this Cla.s.s comprehends the only judgements which are trustworthy, so does it include the most erroneous and perverse.
For to be mistaught is worse than to be untaught; and no perverseness equals that which is supported by system, no errors are so difficult to root out as those which the understanding has pledged its credit to uphold. In this Cla.s.s are contained censors, who, if they be pleased with what is good, are pleased with it only by imperfect glimpses, and upon false principles; who, should they generalize rightly, to a certain point, are sure to suffer for it in the end; who, if they stumble upon a sound rule, are fettered by misapplying it, or by straining it too far; being incapable of perceiving when it ought to yield to one of higher order. In it are found critics too petulant to be pa.s.sive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him; men, who take upon them to report of the course which _he_ holds whom they are utterly unable to accompany,--confounded if he turn quick upon the wing, dismayed if he soar steadily "into the region";--men of palsied imaginations and indurated hearts; in whose minds all healthy action is languid, who therefore feed as the many direct them, or, with the many, are greedy after vicious provocatives;--judges, whose censure is auspicious, and whose praise ominous! In this cla.s.s meet together the two extremes of best and worst.
The observations presented in the foregoing series are of too ungracious a nature to have been made without reluctance; and, were it only on this account, I would invite the reader to try them by the test of comprehensive experience. If the number of judges who can be confidently relied upon be in reality so small, it ought to follow that partial notice only, or neglect, perhaps long continued, or attention wholly inadequate to their merits--must have been the fate of most works in the higher departments of poetry; and that, on the other hand, numerous productions have blazed into popularity, and have pa.s.sed away, leaving scarcely a trace behind them: it will be further found, that when Authors shall have at length raised themselves into general admiration and maintained their ground, errors and prejudices have prevailed concerning their genius and their works, which the few who are conscious of those errors and prejudices would deplore; if they were not recompensed by perceiving that there are select Spirits for whom it is ordained that their fame shall be in the world an existence like that of Virtue, which owes its being to the struggles it makes, and its vigour to the enemies whom it provokes;--a vivacious quality, ever doomed to meet with opposition, and still triumphing over it; and, from the nature of its dominion, incapable of being brought to the sad conclusion of Alexander, when he wept that there were no more worlds for him to conquer.
Let us take a hasty retrospect of the poetical literature of this Country for the greater part of the last two centuries, and see if the facts support these inferences.
Who is there that now reads the _Creation_ of Dubartas? Yet all Europe once resounded with his praise; he was caressed by kings; and, when his Poem was translated into our language, the _Faery Queen_ faded before it. The name of Spenser, whose genius is of a higher order than even that of Ariosto, is at this day scarcely known beyond the limits of the British Isles. And if the value of his works is to be estimated from the attention now paid to them by his countrymen, compared with that which they bestow on those of some other writers, it must be p.r.o.nounced small indeed.
The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets _sage_--
are his own words; but his wisdom has, in this particular, been his worst enemy: while its opposite, whether in the shape of folly or madness, has been _their_ best friend. But he was a great power, and bears a high name: the laurel has been awarded to him.
A dramatic Author, if he write for the stage, must adapt himself to the taste of the audience, or they will not endure him; accordingly the mighty genius of Shakespeare was listened to. The people were delighted: but I am not sufficiently versed in stage antiquities to determine whether they did not flock as eagerly to the representation of many pieces of contemporary Authors, wholly undeserving to appear upon the same boards. Had there been a formal contest for superiority among dramatic writers, that Shakespeare, like his predecessors Sophocles and Euripides, would have often been subject to the mortification of seeing the prize adjudged to sorry compet.i.tors, becomes too probable, when we reflect that the admirers of Settle and Shadwell were, in a later age, as numerous, and reckoned as respectable, in point of talent, as those of Dryden. At all events, that Shakespeare stooped to accommodate himself to the People, is sufficiently apparent; and one of the most striking proofs of his almost omnipotent genius is, that he could turn to such glorious purpose those materials which the prepossessions of the age compelled him to make use of. Yet even this marvellous skill appears not to have been enough to prevent his rivals from having some advantage over him in public estimation; else how can we account for pa.s.sages and scenes that exist in his works, unless upon a supposition that some of the grossest of them, a fact which in my own mind I have no doubt of, were foisted in by the Players, for the gratification of the many?
But that his Works, whatever might be their reception upon the stage, made but little impression upon the ruling Intellects of the time, may be inferred from the fact that Lord Bacon, in his multifarious writings, nowhere either quotes or alludes to him.[5] His dramatic excellence enabled him to resume possession of the stage after the Restoration; but Dryden tells us that in his time two of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted for one of Shakespeare"s. And so faint and limited was the perception of the poetic beauties of his dramas in the time of Pope, that, in his Edition of the Plays, with a view of rendering to the general reader a necessary service, he printed between inverted commas those pa.s.sages which he thought most worthy of notice.
At this day, the French Critics have abated nothing of their aversion to this darling of our Nation: "the English, with their bouffon de Shakespeare," is as familiar an expression among them as in the time of Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the French Theatre; an advantage which the Parisian Critic owed to his German blood and German education. The most enlightened Italians, though well acquainted with our language, are wholly incompetent to measure the proportions of Shakespeare. The Germans only, of foreign nations, are approaching towards a knowledge and feeling of what he is. In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the fellow countrymen of the Poet: for among us it is a current, I might say, an established opinion, that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is p.r.o.nounced to be "a wild irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties." How long may it he before this misconception pa.s.ses away, and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judgement of Shakespeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, const.i.tute a unity of their own, and contribute all to one great end, is not less admirable than his imagination, his invention, and his intuitive knowledge of human Nature?
There is extant a small Volume of miscellaneous poems, in which Shakespeare expresses his own feelings in his own person. It is not difficult to conceive that the Editor, George Steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that Volume, the Sonnets; though in no part of the writings of this Poet is found, in an equal compa.s.s, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed. But, from regard to the Critic"s own credit, he would not have ventured to talk of an[6] act of parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of those little pieces, if he had not known that the people of England were ignorant of the treasures contained in them: and if he had not, moreover, shared the too common propensity of human nature to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, as an inmate of the celestial regions--"there sitting where he durst not soar."
Nine years before the death of Shakespeare, Milton was born, and early in life he published several small poems, which, though on their first appearance they were praised by a few of the judicious, were afterwards neglected to that degree, that Pope in his youth could borrow from them without risk of its being known. Whether these poems are at this day justly appreciated, I will not undertake to decide nor would it imply a severe reflection upon the ma.s.s of readers to suppose the contrary, seeing that a man of the acknowledged genius of Voss, the German poet, could suffer their spirit to evaporate, and could change their character, as is done in the translation made by him of the most popular of these pieces. At all events, it is certain that these Poems of Milton are now much read, and loudly praised, yet were they little heard of till more than 150 years after their publication, and of the Sonnets, Dr. Johnson, as appears from Boswell"s _Life_ of him, was in the habit of thinking and speaking as contemptuously as Steevens wrote upon those of Shakespeare.
About the time when the Pindaric odes of Cowley and his imitators, and the productions of that cla.s.s of curious thinkers whom Dr. Johnson has strangely styled metaphysical Poets, were beginning to lose something of that extravagant admiration which they had excited, the _Paradise Lost_ made its appearance. "Fit audience find though few," was the pet.i.tion addressed by the Poet to his inspiring Muse. I have said elsewhere that he gained more than he asked, this I believe to be true, but Dr. Johnson has fallen into a gross mistake when he attempts to prove, by the sale of the work, that Milton"s Countrymen were "_just_ to it" upon its first appearance. Thirteen hundred Copies were sold in two years, an uncommon example, he a.s.serts, of the prevalence of genius in opposition to so much recent enmity as Milton"s public conduct had excited. But be it remembered that, if Milton"s political and religious opinions, and the manner in which he announced them, had raised him many enemies, they had procured him numerous friends, who, as all personal danger was pa.s.sed away at the time of publication, would be eager to procure the master-work of a man whom they revered, and whom they would be proud of praising. Take, from the number of purchasers, persons of this cla.s.s, and also those who wished to possess the Poem as a religious work, and but few I fear would be left who sought for it on account of its poetical merits. The demand did not immediately increase; "for," says Dr. Johnson, "many more readers"
(he means persons in the habit of reading poetry) "than were supplied at first the Nation did not afford." How careless must a writer be who can make this a.s.sertion in the face of so many existing t.i.tle-pages to belie it! Turning to my own shelves, I find the folio of Cowley, seventh edition, 1681. A book near it is Flatman"s Poems, fourth edition, 1686, Waller, fifth edition, same date. The Poems of Norris of Bemerton not long after went, I believe, through nine editions.
What further demand there might be for these works I do not know; but I well remember that, twenty-five years ago, the booksellers" stalls in London swarmed with the folios of Cowley. This is not mentioned in disparagement of that able writer and amiable man; but merely to show that, if Milton"s Works were not more read, it was not because readers did not exist at the time. The early editions of the _Paradise Lost_ were printed in a shape which allowed them to be sold at a low price, yet only three thousand copies of the Work were sold in eleven years; and the Nation, says Dr. Johnson, had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the Works of Shakespeare; which probably did not together make one thousand Copies; facts adduced by the critic to prove the "paucity of Readers,"--There were readers in mult.i.tudes; but their money went for other purposes, as their admiration was fixed elsewhere. We are authorized, then, to affirm that the reception of the _Paradise Lost_, and the slow progress of its fame, are proofs as striking as can be desired that the positions which I am attempting to establish are not erroneous.[7]--How amusing to shape to one"s self such a critique as a Wit of Charles"s days, or a Lord of the Miscellanies or trading Journalist of King William"s time, would have brought forth, if he had set his faculties industriously to work upon this Poem, everywhere impregnated with _original_ excellence.
So strange indeed are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles[8] in human nature for this art to rest upon. I have been honoured by being permitted to peruse in MS. a tract composed between the period of the Revolution and the close of that century. It is the Work of an English Peer of high accomplishments, its object to form the character and direct the studies of his son. Perhaps nowhere does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. The good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. Yet the Author, selecting among the Poets of his own country those whom he deems most worthy of his son"s perusal, particularizes only Lord Rochester, Sir John Denham, and Cowley.
Writing about the same time, Shaftesbury, an author at present unjustly depreciated, describes the English Muses as only yet lisping in their cradles.
The arts by which Pope, soon afterwards, contrived to procure to himself a more general and a higher reputation than perhaps any English Poet ever attained during his lifetime, are known to the judicious. And as well known is it to them, that the undue exertion of those arts is the cause why Pope has for some time held a rank in literature, to which, if he had not been seduced by an over-love of immediate popularity, and had confided more in his native genius, he never could have descended. He bewitched the nation by his melody, and dazzled it by his polished style and was himself blinded by his own success. Having wandered from humanity in his Eclogues with boyish inexperience, the praise, which these compositions obtained, tempted him into a belief that Nature was not to be trusted, at least in pastoral Poetry. To prove this by example, he put his friend Gay upon writing those Eclogues which their author intended to be burlesque.
The instigator of the work, and his admirers, could perceive in them nothing but what was ridiculous. Nevertheless, though these Poems contain some detestable pa.s.sages, the effect, as Dr Johnson well observes, "of reality and truth became conspicuous even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded." The Pastorals, ludicrous to such as prided themselves upon their refinement, in spite of those disgusting pa.s.sages, "became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations."
Something less than sixty years after the publication of the _Paradise Lost_ appeared Thomson"s _Winter_, which was speedily followed by his other Seasons. It is a work of inspiration, much of it is written from himself, and n.o.bly from himself. How was it received? "It was no sooner read," says one of his contemporary biographers, "than universally admired those only excepted who had not been used to feel, or to look for anything in poetry, beyond a _point_ of satirical or epigrammatic wit, a smart _ant.i.thesis_ richly trimmed with rime, or the softness of an _elegiac_ complaint. To such his manly cla.s.sical spirit could not readily commend itself, till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer taste. A few others stood aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing anything new and original. These were somewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance of a poet, who seemed to owe nothing but to nature and his own genius. But, in a short time, the applause became unanimous, every one wondering how so many pictures, and pictures so familiar, should have moved them but faintly to what they felt in his descriptions. His digressions too, the overflowings of a tender benevolent heart, charmed the reader no less, leaving him in doubt, whether he should more admire the Poet or love the Man."
This case appears to bear strongly against us--but we must distinguish between wonder and legitimate admiration. The subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year: and, by undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a Poet. Now, it is remarkable that, excepting the nocturnal _Reverie of Lady Winchelsea_, and a pa.s.sage or two in the _Windsor Forest_ of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the _Paradise Lost_ and the _Seasons_ does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet has been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination. To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of Night in one of his Tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the _Iliad_. A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth. Dryden"s lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless;[9] those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory. The verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,--nay, there is not a pa.s.sage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. Strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!--If these two distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be a.s.sured that those pa.s.sages of the elder poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to those appearances.
Wonder is the natural product of Ignorance; and as the soil was _in such good condition_ at the time of the publication of the _Seasons_ the crop was doubtless abundant. Neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment.
Thomson was an inspired poet, but he could not work miracles; in cases where the art of seeing had in some degree been learned, the teacher would further the proficiency of his pupils, but he could do little _more_; though so far does vanity a.s.sist men in acts of self-deception, that many would often fancy they recognized a likeness when they knew nothing of the original. Having shown that much of what his biographer deemed genuine admiration must in fact have been blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?--Thomson was fortunate in the very t.i.tle of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared sympathies of every one: in the next place, notwithstanding his high powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactly of that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of the _Seasons_ the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories (perhaps "Damon and Musidora"); these also are prominent in our collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his Work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice. Pope, repaying praises which he had received, and wishing to extol him to the highest, only styles him "an elegant and philosophical Poet"; nor are we able to collect any unquestionable proofs that the true characteristics of Thomson"s genius as an imaginative poet[10] were perceived, till the elder Warton, almost forty years after the publication of the _Seasons_, pointed them out by a note in his Essay on the _Life and Writings of Pope_. In the _Castle of Indolence_ (of which Gray speaks so coldly) these characteristics were almost as conspicuously displayed, and in verse more harmonious and diction more pure. Yet that fine poem was neglected on its appearance, and is at this day the delight only of a few!
When Thomson died, Collins breathed forth his regrets in an Elegiac Poem, in which he p.r.o.nounces a poetical curse upon _him_ who should regard with insensibility the place where the Poet"s remains were deposited. The Poems of the mourner himself have now pa.s.sed through innumerable editions, and are universally known, but if, when Collins died, the same kind of imprecation had been p.r.o.nounced by a surviving admirer, small is the number whom it would not have comprehended. The notice which his poems attained during his lifetime was so small, and of course the sale so insignificant, that not long before his death he deemed it right to repay to the bookseller the sum which he had advanced for them and threw the edition into the fire.
Next in importance to the _Seasons_ of Thomson, though a considerable distance from that work in order of time, come the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, collected, new-modelled, and in many instances (if such a contradiction in terms may be used) composed by the Editor, Dr Percy. This work did not steal silently into the world, as is evident from the number of legendary tales, that appeared not long after its publication, and had been modelled, as the authors persuaded themselves, after the old Ballad. The Compilation was, however ill suited to the then existing taste of city society, and Dr Johnson, "mid the little senate to which he gave laws, was not sparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt. The critic triumphed, the legendary imitators were deservedly disregarded, and as undeservedly, their ill imitated models sank in this country into temporary neglect, while Burger and other able writers of Germany, were translating or imitating these Reliques, and composing, with the aid of inspiration thence derived, poems which are the delight of the German nation. Dr Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labours from the ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom he lived, that, though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of _Sir Cauline_ and by many other pieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as a poetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of the _Hermit of Warkworth_, a diction scarcely in any one of its features distinguishable from the vague, the glossy, and unfeeling language of his day. I mention this remarkable fact[11]
with regret, esteeming the genius of Dr. Percy in this kind of writing superior to that of any other man by whom in modern times it has been cultivated. That even Burger (to whom Klopstock gave, in my hearing, a commendation which he denied to Goethe and Schiller, p.r.o.nouncing him to be a genuine poet, and one of the few among the Germans whose works would last) had not the fine sensibility of Percy, might be shown from many pa.s.sages, in which he has deserted his original only to go astray. For example,
Now daye was gone, and night was come, And all were fast asleepe, All save the Lady Emeline, Who sate in her bowre to weepe:
And soone she heard her true Love"s voice Low whispering at the walle, Awake, awake, my dear Ladye, "Tis I thy true love call
Which is thus tricked out and dilated;
Als nun die Nacht Gebirg" und Thal Vermummt in Rabenschatten, Und Hochburgs Lampen uberall Schon ausgeflimmert hatten, Und alles tief entschlafen war; Doch nur das Fraulein immerdar, Voll Fieberangst, noch wachte, Und seinen Ritter dachte: Da horch! Ein susser Liebeston Kam leis, empor geflogen.
"Ho, Trudchen, ho! Da bin ich schon!
Frisch auf! Dich angezogen!"
But from humble ballads we must ascend to heroics.
All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition--it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. The Editor of the _Reliques_ had indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! how selfish his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested Gael, who, like Lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become a pensioner upon his own issue for a beggarly pittance!--Open this far-famed Book!--I have done so at random, and the beginning of the _Epic Poem Temora_, in eight Books, presents itself. "The blue waves of Ullin roll in light. The green hills are covered with day. Trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze. Grey torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha.
His spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds." Precious memorandums from the pocket-book of the blind Ossian!
If it be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion.--Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious. In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson"s work it is exactly the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,--yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are subst.i.tuted for things. To say that the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is doing nothing more than p.r.o.nouncing a censure which Macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he could talk so familiarly of his Car-borne heroes;--of Morven, which, if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed along its surface.--Mr. Malcolm Laing has ably shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley a.s.semblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel pa.s.sages as to call poor Macpherson to account for his "_ands_" and his "_buts_!" and he has weakened his argument by conducting it as if he thought that every striking resemblance was a _conscious_ plagiarism. It is enough that the coincidences are too remarkable for its being probable or possible that they could arise in different minds without communication between them. Now as the Translators of the Bible, and Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, could not be indebted to Macpherson, it follows that he must have owed his fine feathers to them; unless we are prepared gravely to a.s.sert, with Madame de Stael, that many of the characteristic beauties of our most celebrated English Poets are derived from the ancient Fingallian; in which case the modern translator would have been but giving back to Ossian his own.--It is consistent that Lucien Buonaparte, who could censure Milton for having surrounded Satan in the infernal regions with courtly and regal splendour, should p.r.o.nounce the modern Ossian to be the glory of Scotland;--a country that has produced a Dunbar, a Buchanan, a Thomson, and a Burns! These opinions are of ill omen for the Epic ambition of him who has given them to the world.
Yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the Country. No succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured formally to imitate them--except the boy, Chatterton, on their first appearance. He had perceived, from the successful trials which he himself had made in literary forgery, how few critics were able to distinguish between a real ancient medal and a counterfeit of modern manufacture; and he set himself to the work of filling a magazine with _Saxon Poems_,--counterparts of those of Ossian, as like his as one of his misty stars is to another. This incapability to amalgamate with the literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.--Contrast, in this respect, the effect of Macpherson"s publication with the _Reliques_ of Percy, so una.s.suming, so modest in their pretensions!--I have already stated how much Germany is indebted to this latter work; and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the _Reliques_; I know that it is so with my friends; and, for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own.
Dr. Johnson, more fortunate in his contempt of the labours of Macpherson than those of his modest friend, was solicited not long after to furnish Prefaces biographical and critical for the works of some of the most eminent English Poets. The booksellers took upon themselves to make the collection; they referred probably to the most popular miscellanies, and, unquestionably, to their books of accounts; and decided upon the claim of authors to be admitted into a body of the most eminent, from the familiarity of their names with the readers of that day, and by the profits, which, from the sale of his works, each had brought and was bringing to the Trade. The Editor was allowed a limited exercise of discretion, and the Authors whom he recommended are scarcely to be mentioned without a smile. We open the volume of Prefatory Lives, and to our astonishment the _first_ name we find is that of Cowley!--What Is become of the morning-star of English Poetry?
Where is the bright Elizabethan constellation? Or, if names be more acceptable than images, where is the ever to-be-honoured Chaucer?
where is Spenser? where Sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights as a poet, contra-distinguished from those which he is universally allowed to possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,--where Shakespeare?--These, and a mult.i.tude of others not unworthy to be placed near them, their contemporaries and successors, we have _not_.
But in their stead, we have (could better be expected when precedence was to be settled by an abstract of reputation at any given period made, as in this case before us?) Roscommon, and Stepney, and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and Duke, and King, and Spratt--Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve, Broome, and other reputed Magnates--metrical writers utterly worthless and useless, except for occasions like the present, when their productions are referred to as evidence what a small quant.i.ty of brain is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day.
As I do not mean to bring down this retrospect to our own times, it may with propriety be closed at the era of this distinguished event.
From the literature of other ages and countries, proofs equally cogent might have been adduced, that the opinions announced in the former part of this Essay are founded upon truth. It was not an agreeable office, nor a prudent undertaking, to declare them; but their importance seemed to render it a duty. It may still be asked, where lies the particular relation of what has been said to these Volumes?--The question will be easily answered by the discerning Reader who is old enough to remember the taste that prevailed when some of these poems were first published, seventeen years ago; who has also observed to what degree the poetry of this Island has since that period been coloured by them; and who is further aware of the unremitting hostility with which, upon some principle or other, they have each and all been opposed. A sketch of my own notion of the const.i.tution of Fame has been given; and, as far as concerns myself, I have cause to be satisfied. The love, the admiration, the indifference, the slight, the aversion, and even the contempt, with which these Poems have been received, knowing, as I do, the source within my own mind, from which they have proceeded, and the labour and pains, which, when labour and pains appeared needful, have been bestowed upon them, must all, if I think consistently, be received as pledges and tokens, bearing the same general impression, though widely different in value;--they are all proofs that for the present time I have not laboured in vain; and afford a.s.surances, more or less authentic, that the products of my industry will endure.
If there be one conclusion more forcibly pressed upon us than another by the review which has been given of the fortunes and fate of poetical Works, it is this--that every author, as far as he is great and at the same time _original_, has had the task of _creating_ the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will it continue to be. This remark was long since made to me by the philosophical Friend for the separation of whose poems from my own I have previously expressed my regret. The predecessors of an original Genius of a high order will have smoothed the way for all that he has in common with them;--and much he will have in common; but, for what is peculiarly his own, he will be called upon to clear and often to shape his own road:--he will be in the condition of Hannibal among the Alps.
And where lies the real difficulty of creating that taste by which a truly original poet is to be relished? Is it in breaking the bonds of custom, in overcoming the prejudices of false refinement, and displacing the aversions of inexperience? Or, if he labour for an object which here and elsewhere I have proposed to myself, does it consist in divesting the reader of the pride that induces him to dwell upon those points wherein men differ from each other, to the exclusion of those in which all men are alike, or the same; and in making him ashamed of the vanity that renders him insensible of the appropriate excellence which civil arrangements, less unjust than might appear, and Nature illimitable in her bounty, had conferred on men who may stand below him in the scale of society? Finally, does it lie in establishing that dominion over the spirits of readers by which they are to be humbled and humanized, in order that they may be purified and exalted?
If these ends are to be attained by the mere communication of _knowledge_, it does _not_ lie here.--TASTE, I would remind the reader, like IMAGINATION, is a word which has been forced to extend its services far beyond the point to which philosophy would have confined them. It is a metaphor, taken from a _pa.s.sive_ sense of the human body, and transferred to things which are in their essence _not_ pa.s.sive,--to intellectual _acts_ and _operations_. The word, Imagination, has been overstrained, from impulses honourable to mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the n.o.blest of our nature. In the instance of Taste, the process has been reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the child of apathy,--which, as Nations decline in productive and creative power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make of the word, Imagination; but the word, Taste, has been stretched to the sense which it bears in modern Europe by habits of self-conceit, inducing that inversion in the order of things whereby a pa.s.sive faculty is made paramount among the faculties conversant with the fine arts. Proportion and congruity, the requisite knowledge being supposed, are subjects upon which taste may be trusted; it is competent to this office--for in its intercourse with these the mind is _pa.s.sive_, and is affected painfully or pleasurably as by an instinct. But the profound and the exquisite in feeling, the lofty and universal in thought and imagination; or, in ordinary language, the pathetic and the sublime;--are neither of them, accurately speaking, objects of a faculty which could ever without a sinking in the spirit of Nations have been designated by the metaphor _Taste_. And why?
Because without the exertion of a co-operating _power_ in the mind of the reader, there can be no adequate sympathy with either of these emotions: without this auxiliary impulse, elevated or profound pa.s.sion cannot exist.
Pa.s.sion, it must be observed, is derived from a word which signifies _suffering_; but the connexion which suffering has with effort, with exertion, and _action_, is immediate and inseparable. How strikingly is this property of human nature exhibited by the fact that, in popular language, to be in a pa.s.sion is to be angry! But,
Anger in hasty _words_ or _blows_ Itself discharges on its foes.
To be moved, then, by a pa.s.sion is to be excited, often to external, and always to internal, effort; whether for the continuance and strengthening of the pa.s.sion, or for its suppression, accordingly as the course which it takes may be painful or pleasurable. If the latter, the soul must contribute to its support, or it never becomes vivid,--and soon languishes and dies. And this brings us to the point.
If every great poet with whose writings men are familiar, in the highest exercise of his genius, before he can be thoroughly enjoyed, has to call forth and to communicate _power_, this service, in a still greater degree, falls upon an original writer, at his first appearance in the world.--Of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before: Of genius, in the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of human sensibility, for the delight, honour, and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe: or, if that be not allowed, it is the application of powers to objects on which they had not before been exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce effects. .h.i.therto unknown. What is all this but an advance, or a conquest, made by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make progress of this kind, like an Indian prince or general--stretched on his palanquin, and borne by his slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his leader, in order that he may exert himself; for he cannot proceed in quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create taste is to call forth and bestow power, of which knowledge is the effect; and _there_ lies the true difficulty.
As the pathetic partic.i.p.ates of an _animal_ sensation, it might seem--that, if the springs of this emotion were genuine, all men, possessed of competent knowledge of the facts and circ.u.mstances, would be instantaneously affected. And, doubtless, in the works of every true poet will be found pa.s.sages of that species of excellence which is proved by effects immediate and universal. But there are emotions of the pathetic that are simple and direct, and others--that are complex and revolutionary; some--to which the heart yields with gentleness; others--against which it struggles with pride; these varieties are infinite as the combinations of circ.u.mstance and the const.i.tutions of character. Remember, also, that the medium through which, in poetry, the heart is to be affected, is language; a thing subject to endless fluctuations and arbitrary a.s.sociations. The genius of the poet melts these down for his purpose; but they retain their shape and quality to him who is not capable of exerting, within his own mind, a corresponding energy. There is also a meditative, as well as a human, pathos; an enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow; a sadness that has its seat in the depths of reason, to which the mind cannot sink gently of itself--but to which it must descend by treading the steps of thought. And for the sublime,--if we consider what are the cares that occupy the pa.s.sing day, and how remote is the practice and the course of life from the sources of sublimity, in the soul of Man, can it be wondered that there is little existing preparation for a poet charged with a new mission to extend its kingdom, and to augment and spread its enjoyments?
Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word _popular_, applied to new works in poetry, as if there were no test of excellence in this first of the fine arts but that all men should run after its productions, as if urged by an appet.i.te, or constrained by a spell!--The qualities of writing best fitted for eager reception are either such as startle the world into attention by their audacity and extravagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity, and the fancy amused without the trouble of thought. But In everything which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her weakness, or to be made conscious of her power;--wherever life and nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of antiquity and her heroic pa.s.sions uniting, in the heart of the poet, with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of sublimated humanity which is at once a history of the remote past and a prophetic enunciation of the remotest future, _there_, the poet must reconcile himself for a season to few and scattered hearers.--Grand thoughts (and Shakespeare must often have sighed over this truth), as they are most naturally and most fitly conceived in solitude, so can they not be brought forth in the midst of plaudits without some violation of their sanct.i.ty. Go to a silent exhibition of the productions of the sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the mult.i.tude, are essentially different from those by which permanent influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with observing--that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited more zealous admiration, and been far more generally read, than good; but this advantage attends the good, that the _individual_, as well as the species, survives from age to age; whereas, of the depraved, though the species be immortal, the individual quickly _perishes_; the object of present admiration vanishes, being supplanted by some other as easily produced; which, though no better, brings with it at least the irritation of novelty,--with adaptation, more or less skilful, to the changing humours of the majority of those who are most at leisure to regard poetical works when they first solicit their attention.
Is it the result of the whole, that, in the opinion of the Writer, the judgement of the People is not to be respected? The thought is most injurious; and, could the charge be brought against him, he would repel it with indignation. The People have already been justified, and their eulogium p.r.o.nounced by implication, when it was said, above--that, of _good_ poetry, the _individual_, as well as the species, _survives_. And how does it survive but through the People?
What preserves it but their intellect and their wisdom?